I hope you all had a lovely long weekend despite all the smoke! This week is just a three day week since we have moved to a "no Friday" calendar (with the exception of the last week of school that is a five day week).
ELA:
This week we are going to be creating a commercial for different products. This is our first group project and it is a fun way to set the expectations and practice working collaboratively in a group. We have also begun working on narrative writing. We talked about the different parts that make up a narrative writing and practiced identifying them in different short videos to help us plan and figure out what may be missing or what we would change if we were the author.
September Reading Calendars went home last Thursday. They should stay in the back pocket of their Home Folder. That way they always know where it is and can fill it out if they get their reading done at school. This will be due on Tuesday, October 1st.
Math:
This week we are going to continue working on place value concepts. We are doing this by creating pages in our Interactive Math Journals and we will hopefully be starting lessons in Savvas which is our math curriculum.
Math homework is still on xtramath.com until my students have mastered their multiplication facts by being able to consistently answer them in under 3 seconds. Once students have mastered this, they no longer have to do xtramath as a homework assignment!
After they have done that, the only math homework they will have is if they do not finish a math assignment in class. They will be able to access this at home from the Google Class as long as they are logged into their school email account, which is through Gmail.
Home Folder and Agenda:
We are working on getting into the routine of filling out our Agenda book as we go throughout the day with each assignment that is given. If they finish the assignment in class, they are supposed to put a check mark next to it indicating it is done. If they don't finish it, they are supposed to put that on the "Back to School/Unfinished Work" side of their Home Folder so that they can finish it at home. They are supposed to be showing this to you each day when they get home to show you what is done and what is not. One parent had a good idea to have them write a behavior update at the bottom so I had my students do this last Thursday. They should write "no name on board, name on board, or incident report" on the line depending on how their day went. This is one more way to communicate with parents on how our day is going.
Four Houses - One Family:
You may have heard your student talking about being sorted into houses here at school. We are joining schools around the world by bringing the House System to our school. Students will be randomly placed into one of four houses today. The houses focus on different cultures, but most importantly really embody and reinforce the character traits that Vision has adopted. Once a student is placed in a house (or team) they are there for the whole time they are at Vision! This is across grade levels to help foster mentorship relationships and provide leadership opportunities. Schools who have implemented this have seem improvement in student's academics, behavior, and social emotional well-being. I have already seen so much of this in my class already and I am so excited to see where we go!
The four houses are Rêveur (French - The House of Dreamers), Isibindi (South African - The House of Courage), Amistad (Mexico - The House of Friendship), and Altruismo (Brazil - The House of Givers). The main idea is that we may be in four different houses, but we are still one Vision Charter family. We talk about how we want to uplift others because when one of us does well, we all do well! We want to foster healthy competition while still rooting for everyone. This may sound like "My house is the best!" rather than "Your house is not as good as my house!"
Students will be able to earn points for their house. We are working on getting the House App set up and when that happens I will let you all know. You will get a notification if your student earns a point and why. Points have to be earned though! They are not confetti so students really have to go above and beyond to get a point, so if your student isn't getting points every day, that's ok! We are setting the bar high and watching our students rise to it! In the app you can see how your student's points are contributing to their house here at the school, but also to their house globally!
Parents at other schools have really gotten into this and dress in their student's house colors and have even come up with names for themselves, like Ami-Mommies. :) I have seen pictures of parents who have kids in different houses so they have cut apart shirts and sewn them back together to represent both houses. Feel free to get involved with your kids and make it FUN!
I will post pictures of our sorting sometime this week! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment